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Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Say that you get a tempting offer from a Nigerian prince and decide to invest some money in helping him transfer his vast fortune from Burkina Faso or Dubai over to the bank across the street. The seemingly simple task of bringing over the 18 million dollars left to him by his father hits some snags which require you to put in more and more of your own money.

Eventually you have invested more than you ever would have ever done up front, just trying to protect the sunk cost, the money that you already sank into Prince Hussein Ngobo’s scheme. And to protect your self-esteem, you must go on believing that, no matter what Prince Ngobo does, he is credible and sincere. Any failings in the
interaction are either your fault or the fault of some third party.
Anyone who tells you otherwise must be a Ngobophobe.

Now imagine that Prince Ngobo’s real name is Islam.

That is where Western elites find themselves now. They invested heavily in the illusion of a compatible Islamic civilization. Those investments, whether in Islamic immigration or Islamic democracy or peace with Islam have turned toxic, but dropping those investments is as out of the question as writing off Prince Ngobo as a con artist and walking away feeling like a fool. Western elites, who fancy themselves more intelligent and more enlightened than the wise men and prophets of every religion, and who base their entire right to rule on that intelligence and enlightenment, are not in the habit of admitting that they are fools.

The Arab Springers who predicted that the Muslim uprisings would bring a new age of secularism, freedom and an end to the violence between Islam and the West; are busy writing up new checks. Thomas Friedman is penning essays explaining why the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood will mean regional stability and peace with Israel (and if it doesn’t, it will be our fault.)

It’s not insanity; it’s the term that rhymes with a certain river in Egypt. The Brotherhood’s victory discredits the Arab Spring, which discredits the bid for Arab Democracy, which discredits the compatibility of Islam and the folks on Fifth Avenue. Follow the river back along its course and suddenly the Clash of Civilizations becomes an undeniable fact. It’s easier to give up and let the river of denial carry you further along until, five years from now, you find yourself explaining why Al-Qaeda ruling Libya is actually a good thing for everyone.

In 1993, Israel cut a land-for-peace deal with a greasy Egyptian bloke named Yasser Arafat. The Cairo-born Arafat would turn his gang of terrorists into a government and police force, and rule over an autonomous territory, in exchange for ending the violence. Clinton smiled beatifically as hands were shaken and a new era of peace was upon us. The era, however, has yet to show up.

Over two decades of terrorism have not shaken the belief of the American or Israeli establishment in the “Two-State Solution”, which has solved absolutely nothing, except perhaps the problem of how to make the Middle East into an even more unstable place. As the violence increased and the pathway to peace decreased, American Presidents and Israeli Prime Ministers redoubled their concession offers and their faith in the Two-State Solution—now an article of faith in most circles.
Denial isn’t just a river in Egypt; it also laps at the shores of Tel Aviv, flows out to the English coast and all across Europe.

Ask a Eurocrat for the time of day and he’ll calculate how much to charge you for the subsidies to artisanal clock farmers that it will take to answer that question. Ask him about Islamic integration and he will instantly tell you that everything is going smoothly and the problems only exist in the minds of a few bigots and the pages of a few tabloids.

Muslim integration into Europe is going swimmingly, much like the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and the Arab Spring. It’s going like a house on fire, not to mention a bus, a lot of cars and two towers on fire—on the other side of the Atlantic. Whatever problems there are, as with the peace process and the spring process, are undoubtedly the fault of someone who isn’t a Muslim.

The Arab Spring, the Palestinian Peace Process and every similar bid to transform the region presumed that disempowerment was the cause of Muslim violence and that, conversely, empowerment was the solution. Give the poor dears some weapons, a country, a ballot box, free and open elections, and they’ll be less likely to blow themselves up while seeking 72 virgins on the downtown express.
Instead, empowering people who were violent while disempowered; only made them more violent. Some of the best minds in two hemispheres are engaged in seeking a solution to this paradox, which isn’t a paradox at all but rather a straight-line projection.

If Abdul is beheading people when all he has to work with is a sword then, if you give him a gun, he will start shooting them instead. If he’s blowing up buses when he only has a terrorist group, he will blow up countries when he has a country. Empowering Abdul does not diminish his grievances, because his grievances are a function of his capacity for violence. Increasing his capacity will increase his grievances until the entire world is on the wrong end of his empowerment scimitar.

The liberal projection that “Abdul + Power + Money + Bigger Guns = Peace” made as much sense, as Prince Ngobo’s story about his transfer fees being cursed by witches, but, as the song goes, “You gotta have faith.” Some of the things that we have faith in are bigger than us and some are just us. Those who put their faith in Prince Ngobo and in the benign nature of Islam are really putting their faith in their own instincts, trusting that they are right, even while looking into the eye of the wrongness.

We rarely know a thing for what it is. For the most part we know it only for what we want it to be. Our knowledge of the world is inseparable from our worldview, and the machine of the ego which casts the shadows that projects our inner world on the outer world. The only way to avoid that trap is by studying consequences, by creating theories based on actual events, rather than manufacturing events based on theories.

Most people project their own desires and motivations on to others. Americans assumed that Muslims just wanted democracy, free enterprise and apple pie. Muslims assume that Americans are conspiring to undermine them and destroy them through a byzantine series of plots and conspiracies, because that is what they would do in our place… and that is what they are trying to do.
The Eurocrats assume that Muslims wanted to be good multicultural socialists, because that is what they want them to be. They assumed that the Arab Spring was the equivalent of Europe’s own socialist monarchist movements, after having wrongly assumed the same thing about Arab Socialist movements generations earlier. They assumed those things, because just like Prince Ngobo’s business partners trying to figure out how to call up Lagos, they wanted them to be true because of their own desires.

The sunk cost of the free world into the illusion that Islam is benign, that it is a positive influence and that it can be coexisted with is enormous. Even the dollar, euro and shekel costs make the wildest frauds seem tame. The cultural cost is even greater.

The mechanism of denial is that sunk cost. That faith which our political, cultural and academic superiors have in themselves—in their probity, their insight and their rational tools of scientific governance. Muslims dare not question Islam because they fear Allah. Liberals dare not question Islam because they fear being fools. If they were completely wrong about Islam, then what else were they also wrong about? Pull at one thread and the whole dreamcoat dissolves leaving behind a very naked emperor.

The longer the fraud goes on, the more impossible it is for them to admit that they were wrong. What could have been tossed out after a year is an article of faith after twenty and undeniable after forty. To admit that you made a mistake right away is bearable, but to admit that your policy for generations has been utter moon-baked lunacy is inconceivable.

The trouble with naked emperors is that everyone knows they are naked. Give people permission to point out the obvious and they will commence pointing and laughing. The only way to keep from being made a mockery is by desperately maintaining the consensus that everyone knows the pants are there; even if you can’t see them. Everyone knows that Islam is violent in the deeper parts of their minds, where common sense observations directly gathered from experience go. Give people permission to point out the obvious and they will turn angrily on those who lied to them and manipulated them for decades. Worse still, they will brand them incompetent fools who cannot be trusted with the reins of government.

Most insidiously, the left likes the imaginary world that that it has created. The multicultural utopia with jolly Pakistanis adding spice to London, Saudis putting up little mosques on the Canadian prairie and sassy Shiites bringing diversity to Dearborn, isn’t just propaganda—it’s the imaginary world that they want to live in. Just as The Newsroom created an imaginary world in which the left won every debate in the last two years, the new world order that they have imagined of a friendly multicultural democratic Islam, is their imaginary world, created and maintained at our expense, and in the face of all reality and reason.

The illusion of Islam has, like the banking system, become too big to fail. It cannot fail because it would take too much else down with it, leaving behind a harder world. No matter how unintegrated Muslims in Europe are, the Eurocrats must insist that, aside from a few exploding bumps in the road, everything is going according to plan. Any day now a lesbian Imam will be preaching the virtues of secularism in Finsbury Park. It must be that way because the alternative is unthinkable.

In Israel, the Two-State Solution must still be the solution, because the alternative is eternal conflict. In the rest of the region, Arab Democracy must be viable, because otherwise there is nothing left but despair over an irredeemable barbarism.

We gotta have faith, not in any deity, including the chief deity of Islam, but in our leaders. Muslims believe that Allah is infallible, while we are expected to believe that the politicians and professors, the diplomats and journalists, are. That they are right, even when the continuing violence proves that they are wrong.

The people who shape our half of the world have fallen for the Nigerian Prince scam of Islam and they need to believe that they know what they are doing and they need us to believe it too. And when the check from Lagos doesn’t clear, when the bombs go off, the cars burn, the children are murdered in schools and the rockets fly, then they don’t blame Prince Hussein Ngobo, the car bombers, terrorists and throatslitters—they blame us for ruining the illusion by not believing in it too.

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comments:

Good article, Daniel. However, it's worse than mere denial. The West's elites are self-loathing vermin who hate, and want to destroy, their own culture and society. It doesn't matter to them who the destroyers are: Marx or Mohammed. They worship death, as Jamie Glazov has observed.

Or, as Ayn Rand described our current ruling elite over fifty years ago: "They do not want to own your fortune, they want you to lose it; they do not want to succeed, they want you to fail; they do not want to live, they want you to die; they desire nothing, they hate existence, and they keep running, each trying not to learn that the object of his hatred is himself . . . . They are the essence of evil, they, those anti-living objects who seek, by devouring the world, to fill the selfless zero of their soul. It is not your wealth that they’re after. Theirs is a conspiracy against the mind, which means: against life and man." Atlas Shrugged

I hear some movers and shakers in the new Egyptian administration are casting a gimlet eye at the pyramids and other monuments of jahiliyyah - the time of ignorance. Of course what was impossible hundreds of years ago is now quite feasible with western demolition technology.

What squirming and hand wringing that would produce in our western 'elites'!

The strangest thing about all this is the silence of the official Christian Church. Christians are being killed right now in Muslim countries throughout Africa, and now in Egypt. After 1400 years of conflict, have the Christians really become deceived about Islam?

As a Jew, I will never be able to see the Christian Church as a friend, but right now they are far superior to Islam.

There are supposed to be hundreds of millions of Christians worldwide. Are any of them still serious about their beliefs?

FTA: Western elites, who fancy themselves more intelligent and more enlightened than the wise men and prophets of every religion, and who base their entire right to rule on that intelligence and enlightenment...

Daniel, the overall point of this article is right on. I take strong exception with "right to rule". Isn't it more a LEFTIST PRESUMPTION OF LEADERSHIP? Isn't that presumption fostered in well-heeled leftist Foundations & foisted from there onto Academia? Isn't it indoctrinated elitist politicians groomed by the cunning intelligentsia of the Left? Don't indoctrinated leftist politicians browbeat weak-greedy RINOs into collusion? Isn't what you describe here one more facet of the Big Lefty Lie cooked up by the likes of Bill Ayers working behind the scenes? Call them the totalitarian Democrat elite.

There is an astonishing amount of faith put in the idea that if you really, really like someone they will out of sheer gratitude, like you in return.

Liking a scheming, murderous cult is the left-leaner's way of hoping that the cult will like you. That somehow, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that they will remember your self-effacement and humble bowing when their more lunatic fringes press to reduce the west to rubble.

All the hanging of gays and stoning of married women and female genital mutilation and honor killings and acid in the face of schoolgirls may be evidence to many in the west of this cult's real nature but to the lefties it is evidence that can somehow be ignored.

"They don't mean it," lefties say. Well, the lunatic fringes of this cult do it often enough so it is a reasonable guess they will again. Or we hear the eternal "Christians used to do things like that too." Maybe they did, hundreds of years ago, but they don't do it now.

So why does this oppressed cult do it at all now?

But above all the lefties pretend that if you like the people who openly say they despise you, and keep saying you like them no matter what they do, they might just spare you when they gain power. After all, some of the cult keep saying they won't harm you.

I once attended a lecture by Dr Mark Durie. He explained and backed up with historical evidence an Islamic law, similar to Taqqiya. Essentially this is Islamic law states that any treatys signed by Islamic countries are null and void because unless other party is also Islamist. Because Allah does not reccognize negotiating power of Infidels. They are however allowed to temporarily honor the treaty until they regain the ability to wipe the enemy of Islam out. So there have been many treaties throughout history, such as the one that led to the recreation of Israel in 1948. But none have ever been honored by the Islamists for very long.

The ultimate leason here as Danial so perfectly put is that there will never be a "Two State" solution mainly because the premise of getting an Islamist to honor anything outside of the Koran is silly at best, but silly in a very dangerous way. And unfortunately, as long as there is a Muslim still roaming the Earth, there will never be peace.

@fsy- It depends on which Christian Church you speak of. Many, like Protestants and Baptist are very good friends to us (Jews and Israel). The Catholic Church pretty much care about Catholics and have given up on Jews because they can't seem to convert us. Evangelicals are probably the Jews biggest ally mainly because they focus heavily on the old Testament as do we, it is a slightly different version, but shows lots of focus on Jews in Israel. Rev Dr. Martin Luther King Jr was big time Zionist supporter. http://www.messiahnj.org/mlking.htm

Some of the more cult like offshoots of Christianity tend to be more hateful and partly why they do not belong to more renouned Churches.

I don't believe for one second that the ruling Marxist elite are in denial about Islam. They know full well what it is, they are importing millions of Muslims into the West and paying for them to secure votes and they're allowing Sharia law to creep in.

It's deliberate. Just as the destruction of the economy has been, just as their brainwashing of our people into guilt-ridden self haters has been in fact, just as their entire plan to destroy the west has been.

The goal of Marxism is to create an international, stateless, classless society. They do not want a people who are intelligent and aware, they fear what they have done being done to them. They want mindless obedience. Islam - submission - is going to help them achieve it, there is no more a retarded ideology that turns believers into sheep.

Let's also remember that the Nazis were in alliance with Muslims, indeed, both Hitler and Himmler admired it as a strong religion.

The signs about the true nature of our elites are there to be seen. That's the Emperor's New Clothes that needs to be pointed out.

Great article, Daniel. I like the Nigerian Prince analogy. This huge delusion is foisted on us from every mainstream media outlet, public school and university. Without a strong emotional base, all the brain power in the word doesn't protect against denial. And you are correct, the bigger the lie, the harder to let it go. One complicating factor is the increasing presence of muslims in our work places and neighborhoods. Some are quite personable. Some play the same 'victim group game' as some American Blacks (and other groups) do. Its so self satisfyingly "tolerant" for many to view the entire Islamic world as just as friendly and unthreatening as their new coworker.

@fsy - Jesus taught to turn the other cheek, Paul taught to respect authority and those in leadership positions. Most Christian denominations teach that God is in control. Few spend time in Esther -- perhaps because His name is not mentioned in that book, or because the plot was thwarted by a strong defense.

A hundred years ago the TE Lawrence's and Aubrey Herbert's were worshiping the wonders of exotic Orientalism. They loved all things Ottoman and Arab and the Foreign Office literally could not sing their praises enough. Very little has changed.

The percentages are arbitrary, but half the politicians and NGO's and their fellow travelers that patronize Islam do so from "Western Guilt" and wish to see the West brought to its knees. They hate the West and wish to turn America especially into the nerd on the block. The other half, such as VP Joe Biden, are certifiable halfwits who are just along for the ride and are as clueless about Islam as they are about economics and just about everything else.

Our leaders have sunk so much political, intellectual and financial capital into the Islam is the RoP, that retracting now will make them appear complete fools. So they carry on, taking the rest of us with them into perdition.

Who said this a liberal or a conservative? "Islam is a religion of peace." That would be the Republican President George Bush. Who said that jihad has nothing to do with Islam? That would be Republican Mitt Romney. Who supported the religious mujahedeen against the Godless Soviets? That would be the Republican Ronald Reagan. Who supported the Islamic partition of India? That would be the conservative Winston Churchill. Under whom was 3/4 of the Palestine region to the Arabs, and only 1/4 to the Jews when initially all of the Palestine region could be a possible home for the Jews? That again would be Winston Churchill. Who was working with the Aga Khan and white washing Islam in Texas? That would be Rick Perry (Pamela Gellar exposed him)? Which party loves Grover Norquist who has many ties to radical Muslims but never questions him on his ties? That would be the Republican party.

A genuine counter jihad movement will take an honest look at the conservative pandering to Islam as well as liberal.

Where in this article did you hold the conservative feet to the fire? You only mention liberals. You may not have defended Bush here but omitting conservatives role while only speaking of liberals is no better.

Why oh WHY do you need to rewrite history? It was 1993, not 1991!!!!!!!!! It was Rabin, not Itzhak Shamir z"l!!!!!! You're not in a habit of fixing typos, and understandably so, but this typo you MUST fix! Your writing is too important, it will be read many decades from now, and you just MUSTN'T add to the confusion - there's enough of that poison already in the world!

About the denial in protecting a failing investment in illusion of compatible Islamic civilization - right on a target! Except that they are not driven just by vanity, but by old ugly GREED - they must pretend to believe their ow lies, to be able to TRADE with the Arab Occupied World. To acknowledge the truth, to accept the only remedy besides war - which is TOTAL BLOCKADE and EMBARGO on anything Islamic - means using trillions upon trillions of dollars for the West, in immediate trade deals.

The Right in Israel is very much opposed to this phony piecemeal process, but is under constant threat of phony prosecutions by the activist state prosecutors; the problem is with the dreamers on the left who Occupy the nation's mass media and brainwash the indifferent escapist powerless masses in the "center" - but for American Establishment I don't believe for a minute they have any illusions.

All the USA/CIA want is to DUMP ISRAEL. They been looking to dump Israel since the fall of the USSR! They cut their deal with IRAN in 2007 - Muqtada Sadr went into exile for 5 years - told his supporters to lay down arms - Bush proclaimed the phony "surge" worked - USA/CIA got to leave Iraq without loosing too much face - IRAN got to KEEP their NUKES!

There are just too many believers in the State Dept that if only "we" feed the Jews to the Arabs, all will be well in the Middle East and "we" could have "our" precious TRADE in the Trillions of Dollars with the Arabs flowing, as "we" always had for the past 80 years. That's right, the USA/CIA not sparing even ONE bomb to bomb Auschwitz was no coincidence!!!

The cure is known since the 1940s - Jabotinsky said it - put up the Iron Wall around them! Stop any and all trade, any migration, any contact with them! The only thing flowing should be massive propaganda of Freedom and Truth! Too bad today's rulers of America are the enemies of Truth and Freedom!

(you're wrong about 1991 - the Madrid conference ended with nothing - Israel did not accept any PLO representation right for the "Palestinian Arabs" - the very word "Palestinian" as a noun was still forbidden - Shamir only did it as maneuvering under USA/CIA pressure - Rabin/Peres distorted and lied about it, used as justification for their own treason - to negotiate with PLO was treason at the time).

@PAAC you're too kind to your nation. They always were that way. Remember November 1941? That was way past September 29-30 1941, when 32,000 Jews in Kiev were machine-gunned over a ravine by armed forces of a country with which your country had full diplomatic relations at the time and was committed to keeping peace with. And you masses just wouldn't here of going to war with.

You fighting for Freedom was only an internal propaganda by your OSS, to which many have fallen to believe in, fortunately. Your masters went into that war because otherwise Germany would become too powerful, and destroying it ensured they would become the only superpower on the planet.

That internal propaganda in "good American values" continued ever since, never mind the USA/CIA support of their true allies, the Arabs, for the last 70 years, over the Jews with whom they just got stuck with as part of the cold war games, and whom they were seeking to dump ever since the USSR fell.

In case you didn't know, an Israeli sniper had Arafat in his cross-hairs in 1982 in Beirut and was ordered to stand down; USA/CIA demanded safe passage for Arafat and his murdering bunch to Tunisia; Israel was made to promise their safe getaway in the ship while American planes were circling above, giving them protection. Niccce. And then the USA kicked Israelis out and sent their Marines to keep "the peace" there instead of Israeli Army - for all of two or three weeks (or months was it?).

And that's just nothing compared with pressuring Israel - for decades on end - to withdraw to the indefensible borders which Arabs do not recognize anyway. And fighting against Serbs shoulder to shoulder with Az-Zawahiri's "fighters" in the 1990s, supporting the open ally of ayatollah Khomeini, Izetbegovich of the Bosnian Muslims.

lemonlimemoon-------i sincerely do hope that the brotherhood does indeed destroy the pyramids. the pyramids are known by people all over the world, and only the barbarians of islam find them objectionable. even our dear brain dead liberal useful idiots would see the destruction of the pyramids to be barbaric, even if they dont see that much wrong with genocide, rape, slavery, and pedophilia(otherwise known as the religion of peace). please, muslim brotherhood, destroy the pyramids.

I do think more people are waking up, due to the mosque in Murphreesboro, TN, and in other places where Muslims are suing to get their own way. 911 caused us to open our eyes and now, more and more, the average person is paying attention. Thank you for your informative writing, Daniel.

@fsy- It depends on which Christian Church you speak of. Many, like Protestants and Baptist are very good friends to us (Jews and Israel). The Catholic Church pretty much care about Catholics and have given up on Jews because they can't seem to convert us. Evangelicals are probably the Jews biggest ally mainly because they focus heavily on the old Testament as do we, it is a slightly different version, but shows lots of focus on Jews in Israel. Rev Dr. Martin Luther King Jr was big time Zionist supporter"

I'm not sure that's true. I was born into and B'H left the Catholic Church. I developed a deep love of Israel and Judaism. It was impossible not to. Every book of the bible and in the prayer book we used.

I can't recall a single homily when I was a Catholic that taught about converting Jews, at least in my parish.

I'm certain Israelis appreciate the support of xtians who do not wish to convert Jews.

I had and have no interest in starting a theological discussion here. I was trying to raise a simple practical point: Where are the supposed hundreds of millions of Christians when their own (and others as well) are being murdered, raped, tortured, etc. etc.? That's what I still can't figure out.

@fsyWell, imo the Church today is totally emasculated. They don't want to be seen as violent, as waging a new Crusade, etc. There is a lot of liberal/socialist/globalist infiltration in Christianity as well. Their primary priority today seems to be fighting for "social justice", supporting "global redistribution of wealth", "dialogue of civilizations", "anticapitalism, etc. For example the English Church supports the EU and Supranationalism, bans membership in organisations like the EDL, etc. You can expect female bishops and eventually dropping opposition to gay marriage as well.The Church is becoming more liberal/socialist and less christian. They want to avoid a clash of civilizations at any price, they want to live in peaceful multicultural dreamworld, thats it. Helping christians in Asia and Africa and challenging Islam will destroy that dream.

That "denial" was on full display on government-subsidized NPR's Dianne Riehm Show today. (I sometimes have it on as background noise.)

Though the show initially focused on outrages against women in Afghanistan, one caller toward the end described her encounters with "covered" Muslim women and the extent to which they're complicit in their own torments, ultimately insisting the problems were rooted in Islam itself. The host and guests were having none of that. One guest insisted that "Islam is a Religion of Peace", that most are trying to "live their faith" and the problem is simply those in power choosing some (bad) aspects of that Islamic faith while ignoring the rest (apparently the "good parts"). And oh, by the way, Christianity also has a sordid history. Riehm completely concurred. It never occurred to them they were focusing on a few parts that vaguely look like a faith while ignoring all the rest. These people will *never* get it.

There's going to be cultural enrichment in Jerusalem.......when it's Egypt's capital city.....I know, you couldn't make it up could you?

html://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/06/07/219272.

And whilst some whackos don't go to churches - there are plenty in them (most intelligent people who like HaShem, like Jesus and can read for themselves don't go to anywhere because no church teaches the Bible and because of professors like this one:

And the church of England's latest anti-semitic pro-Murderer pro-magical islamic thinking taskforce is blaming Jews and blaming Jews for MAKING them take action against Jews (BDS &.) for, being Jewish it seems, I don't quite get it, but the word "ecumenical" always makes my blood go cold:

Yes it is far worse than denial, it is Islamunism. The denial is more what is going on from the right. Check out McCain's attack on Michele Bachmann for wanting an investigation of the infiltration of the Muslims Brotherhood into the White House. Bohener seems pretty nervous about that too. It's not just the left, folks! Take Frank Gafney's 10 part course on the Muslim Brotherhood in America and see what the Republicans have to hide.

Still the best political writer alive, and I would go further with your point. If Islam is violent, then the Jews might have a reason not to want to keep immigrating there for centuries, to maintain a tiny population, and that nazi-trained muslim nationhood advocates might not be making peace in Israel. That means they are advocating for genocide against the Jews of Israel, in support of the Arab politicians in the government there and their quest against apartheid.

If only more people had your common sense, the traitor party and the traitors in the Republican party would never get away with anything.